


In Color

by MotleyMoose



Series: The Ranch Imagines [6]
Category: The Ranch (TV)
Genre: Gen, This is a little sad, noncanonical history
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-09
Updated: 2017-11-09
Packaged: 2019-01-31 06:40:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12676443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MotleyMoose/pseuds/MotleyMoose
Summary: Looking back on the life of Robert Bennett.





	In Color

**Author's Note:**

> First thing's first: This is a noncanonical version of The Ranch. I'm not sure the dates even add up correctly or anything, but there ya go.
> 
> Secondly: I have no idea what Beau's parents' names are (or Maggie's maiden name, actually), so I just picked some randomly.
> 
> Thirdly: This fic is a mess, but I just needed it out of my docs.

Having survived the Great Depression as an infant, World War Two as a child, and the Korean Conflict as a soldier just barely out of his teens, Robert Bennett was a hardened no-nonsense kind of man. He was tall, slim, and seemed to be made of old leather and boots nails. Those who knew him all agreed - Robert was fair and kind, but the most bullheaded sonovabitch anyone ever had the chance to meet.

After returning from Korea with a limp and a mind full of dark memories, Robert found himself settling down with his high school sweetheart, Josie Robinson. Josie was a strong, solid woman who could hold her own both out in the field and in the home. Together, Robert and Josie were a formidable force, and there was no obstacle too great that they couldn’t conquer.

The Bennetts built a good life together, raising kids and cows on the family’s sprawling seven hundred acre ranch in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. Robert and Josie’s daughters, June and Ruthie, had fled the ranch as soon as they could, marrying men who had never shoveled a barn or shot a coyote. The Bennetts didn’t much care for a person who couldn’t drive a tractor, but they were loving and accepting of their daughters’ husbands all the same.

Their son, Beau, was a different matter.

Beau Bennett was just like his father. Equally tall and lean with an ornery streak half a mile wide, Beau wanted to spend the rest of his life on the ranch. He was up every morning before the crack of dawn, milking the lone dairy cow and feeding the livestock. By the age of eleven, Beau knew that he was going to be a rancher just like his daddy and his granpappy; and by the age of twenty, he had become a damn good rancher.

Robert, prodded by Josie, slowly yet surely began to relinquish more and more of the responsibilities around the ranch to his youngest. Eager to prove himself, Beau took on everything Robert threw at him. He may not have done it exactly as Robert had, but Beau could get the job done and do it well.

Of course, that’s not saying they didn’t have their moments. Robert and Beau often didn’t see eye to eye. Whereas Beau wanted to bring the ranch further into the 20th century by implementing new and improved ranch management techniques (which he’d learned during the one semester of college he’d taken), Robert leaned more and more towards the way his father had run things when he was a child. It wasn’t until 1974 that Beau convinced Robert to purchase an electric starter for their old John Deere tractor, a machine that Robert had been starting by hand since 1944.

The old man hated to admit it, but some of Beau’s newfangled ideas were not <

Disaster struck in early March of 1975; a blizzard claimed over a third of the Bennett herd. Robert, Josie and Beau worked tirelessly for days on end, trying desperately to find and rescue as many cattle as they could. It was dangerously tiring work, and there were several close calls. Robert had braved the storm to string a rope from the house to the feedlot as a guide in case the snow became too heavy and they couldn’t find their way back to the house. It became clear early on that the storm was too dangerous for them to continue searching for wayward cattle. Robert knew there was nothing more he could have done for their herd, but he still carried the guilt and sorrow with him.

By the time spring was in full swing, the Bennetts were beginning to hurt financially. Josie went back to her old job as a teller at the First State Bank of Garrison; Beau found work at the local co-op stacking feed and cleaning the grain elevator pit; and Robert hired himself out as a farmhand to a neighbor in trade for feed and hay. It wasn’t much, but they made do by scrimping and saving every penny that came their way.

It took a few years before they were able to get back on their feet. In 1977, Robert quit his farm job and began ranching again full-time. The next year, Josie followed suit; Beau, however, kept his job at the co-op as a ‘just-in-case’.

As things began to look up and the herd began to grow, Beau started to pull away from the ranch he once loved and threw himself into his job at the co-op. It didn’t take him long to become assistant manager, leaving the grain elevator pit and the feed bags far behind him. Now he had a chance to travel and see what lay beyond the little town of Garrison.

It was on one of his many visits to Nebraska that he’d gotten the phone call: Robert had tipped the tractor and was en route to the hospital in Denver. In a panic, Beau drove the company truck through the night to Denver, abandoning his partner at the hotel back in Omaha. When he arrived at the hospital, Beau learned that Robert had only fractured his collarbone and sprained a knee. It was nothing serious, but the old rancher was ordered to take it easy for a few weeks while everything healed; bedrest did not sit well with Robert.

Beau decided right then and there in the parking lot of the hospital that he would cut back his hours at the co-op in order to spend more time helping his parents with the ranch. It hurt him to give up the travelling as he had recently started seeing Maggie, a Business Major at the college in Omaha, but he promised himself he would write her when he could, call her when he couldn’t, and make every effort to be the best damn thing she had ever known. Their relationship was still fresh, but Beau knew that he wanted to marry her.

Soon, Beau got back into the swing of things, doing chores in the mornings and working at the co-op until suppertime. Evenings were spent mending fence and listening to his dad complain about everything from politics to the greenhorn veterinarian. Things were getting back to normal.

After a month of recuperating, Robert decided that the damned fool doctor didn’t know anything and began to work as hard as he ever did. His bones ached and his muscles were sore from disuse, but the old man kept up with his son and didn’t complain too much about what ailed him. That’s when he started to notice it was harder to catch his breath, harder to ignore the tingling at the tips of his fingers.

But Robert Bennett was no pansy, so he shrugged it off and told himself that he was just out of shape. It would go away on its own.

But it didn’t.

Beau found him a few days later in the rocker on the front porch, with his boots on and the dog at his feet. No words could describe the hurt and the loss that he felt in that moment, so instead he pulled up another chair, poured himself and drink, and watched the sun set over their little patch of heaven.


End file.
